ITAM Salary Survey 2022: Salaries, teams and skills all going up!

ITAM News & Analysis

ITAM Salary Survey 2022: Salaries, teams and skills all going up!

One of the most highly anticipated sessions at Wisdom North America 2022 was the publication of our latest ITAM Salary Survey. This is the 4^th iteration of this survey, which has been conducted almost every 3 years in 2014, 2017, 2019 and now in 2022.

In addition to providing that all-important salary data, the ITAM Review Salary Survey paints a broader picture of the trends shaping the market. This article will explore the main findings around average ITAM salaries , how ITAM teams are evolving, and what resources and skills are in demand over the next 12-24 months.

A total of 119 organisations participated in the survey this year. While this may make it difficult to draw specific conclusions for your own location or circumstance, it is certainly enough data to draw broader conclusions on the trends shaping the industry. The survey is split into three parts; skills, salaries and teams.

 

Skills

Participants were asked to rank their perceived skill levels from 1-10 (with 1 being novice and 10 being expert) in four key areas; desktop, datacentre, cloud and mobile.

ITAM managers were strongest in desktop and datacentre, which would reflect the traditional ITAM path where ITAM typically focuses on the desktop first before moving into other areas such as the datacentre, cloud and mobile. Interestingly, all skills have improved across the board since 2019, while datacentre skills have improved the most.

When cross-referencing this with the salary data, we can see that those with datacentre and cloud skills tend to command higher salaries, since all three salary bands have roughly the same desktop skills, whereas those in the higher salary bands have the higher datacentre and cloud skills. A key takeaway here; if you want to raise your salary, improve your education in these areas.

Skills strengths: working with stakeholders is the strongest skill reported among ITAM leaders, which goes to show that people skills are more important than technical skills for climbing the ITAM ladder. All skills have improved, but audit defence has improved the most, with a near 10% increase since 2019, perhaps due to more practice in recent years?

When looking at which skills people want to improve over the next 12 months, unsurprisingly, cloud is the most important. Interesting new skills which weren’t mentioned three years ago are FinOps and ISO19770 certification.

Gerrit Gipmans, Product Manager at USU reflected on the broad improvement in all skill areas as reported by the survey, stating that “this shows that these topics are still relevant for companies. The fact that there’s a significant increase across all skill areas tells me they haven’t reached their full maturity yet. Secondly, I take from this that people seem to stick within their jobs. They stay in the ITAM area because this is how you build your expertise. And  people sticking to their jobs means that they often have a high level of satisfaction within their jobs, which is a positive and comforting fact.”

 

Salaries

The statistics you’ve all been waiting for. Average salaries in ITAM have increased 13-15% since 2019. The highest growth is in the USA, where average salaries have increased 27.5% from $106,871 to $136,227. In the UK salaries increased 16.5% to £72,282.

Martin Thompson, owner and founder of the ITAM Review comments, “There’s always been a bit of a gap between UK and US salaries – US has always been a bit higher, but the gap has widened. The overall rise in salaries is further indication of an ITAM skills shortage. People are staying in their roles for longer, salaries are increasing, it is harder to find people. There is also a clear loyalty to the profession. All of these factors highlight big risks for companies, since your star Oracle analyst for example could walk out the door at any moment. Companies need to be doing all they can to retain their specialist skills while building up skills at the more junior levels.”

 

Teams

Average team sizes have grown from 4.5 to 5.5 people since 2019, while the average number of assets managed per team member has fallen slightly – this is very positive news since it shows that teams are getting better resourced. The average software spend per team member is $13,850,824.

There is a correlation between the number of assets managed per team member and the perceived reputation of the ITAM team. Once you get to around 9,000 assets managed per team member, the reputation of ITAM improves. The take-away here: If you’re managing more than 9,000 assets then you are under-resourced!

 

Want to increase your skills and salary in 2022? 

Sign up to our upcoming webinar with USU taking place 28th April 2022: Salary & skills in 2022 – How to increase both

Resources

• Watch the full ITAM Salary Survey presentation at Wisdom North America 2022 here
• Download the slides here

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